WIRED Awake: 10 must-read articles for April 10

Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, the Great Barrier Reef has been struck by a major coral bleaching event for the second year running, LiveJournal's new terms and conditions require its users to abide by Russian laws banning "political solicitation", the US Department of Labor says Google is systematically underpaying women in its employ, and more.

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The Great Barrier Reef has experienced a second year of massive coral bleaching, in what Australian researchers have described as a disaster for the reef's delicate ecology (The Guardian). This 2017 coral bleaching event, which has affected the middle section of the reef, is the second most severe on record, after last year's bleaching of the northern third of the reef as a result of warm ocean currents attributed to the El Niño weather pattern. There's no such unusual weather pattern in operation this year, but bleaching continues and has now affected two-thirds of the reef, one of the world's greatest natural wonders. Coral bleaching is the result of corals expelling the symbiotic zooxanthellae algae that live in their tissues. It occurs in response to stress events, most notably the warming of the water beyond the corals' usual tolerances - an effect linked to climate change. Bleached corals often die due to disease and starvation, and recovery is a slow process.

Blogging site and early social network LiveJournal has moved all of its data to Russian servers, and in the process is asking all of its users to sign up to new user agreements banning "political solicitation", a catch-all that can include anything from criticism of the Russian government to the discussion of LGBT issues, or anything else "contradictory to the laws of the Russian Federation" (io9). Award-winning sci-fi author Charles Stross wrote: "the rot has finally gone too far. This Tuesday Livejournal pushed out a revision to their terms of service that emphasize the service runs under Russian law, and specifically requires compliance with Russian law on minors – which makes any discussion of "sexual deviancy" (aka LGBT issues) illegal or at least a violation of the ToS." Livejournal was bought by a Russian firm in 2007, but its servers remained in the US until this year. The move has prompted numerous users to switch to Dreamwidth, a similar service started by former LiveJournal staff and based on the same underlying code, over concerns over free speech and data privacy.

Weed firms are using Instagram influencers to dodge regulations

US government's Department of Labor (DoL) says that Google is systematically underpaying women in its employ, resulting in what's described as an "extreme" pay gap between the genders, even by Silicon Valley standards (The Guardian). DoL regional solicitor Janet Herold said: "The investigation is not complete, but at this point the department has received compelling evidence of very significant discrimination against women in the most common positions at Google headquarters. The government’s analysis at this point indicates that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry." Google has denied the accusations, saying that it doesn't have a pay gap.

Uber has issued its official response to a lawsuit from rival Waymo (formerly known as Google's self-driving car project) that seeks to take Uber's cars off the road over evidence that the ride-sharing firm could be using technology allegedly stolen by former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski (The Verge). Angella Padilla, general counsel to Uber, said in a statement: "If Waymo genuinely thought that Uber was using its secrets, it would not have waited more than five months to seek an injunction. Waymo doesn’t meet the high bar for an injunction, which would stifle our independent innovation – probably Waymo’s goal in the first place." Meanwhile Italy has issued a nationwide ban on the app-based ride-hailing service, ruling that its methods constituted unfair competition against existing taxi associations.

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The fourth release of Wikileaks' CIA files, dubbed Grasshopper, dropped on April 7(WIRED). Within the files are 27 documents, which the leaking organisation says were used by the CIA to build "customised malware payloads for Microsoft Windows operating systems". "Grasshopper is provided with a variety of modules that can be used by a CIA operator as blocks to construct a customised implant that will behave differently, for example maintaining persistence on the computer differently, depending on what particular features or capabilities are selected in the process of building the bundle," Wikileaks says in a statement published alongside the documents. The documents themselves mostly consist of user guides that relate to different system modules.

Hacking group Shadow Brokers has released the password to files it failed to auction off access to last year, which it says contain hacking tools and documents belonging to the USA's National Security Agency (TechCrunch). The password appears at the end of a blog post/racist screed in the form of an open letter to US president Donald Trump. Security experts are currently going through the files, which, as Edward Snowden observes, include "a list of allies' civil infrastructure unlawfully hacked by #NSA."

Your old router is an absolute goldmine for troublesome hackers

Google is rolling out a new fact checking tool for search results worldwide (WIRED). Google's Fact Check label is added to news stories that appear on its News pages as well as in its general search results. When a search result has been fact checked by one of a number of organisations the firm has partnered with, it will display a snippet of text saying so. "This label identifies articles that include information fact-checked by news publishers and fact-checking organisations," Google said in a blog post. Google stressed it isn't doing the fact checking itself, though. This is done by the 115 international organisations the firm has partnered with.

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A real-life, mechanical version of Atari's Pong could be yours to own, as the project nears its Kickstarter goal in its final days of funding (WIRED). Although it looks like a simple air hockey table, the set-up uses trackers underneath the table to sense the movement of a physical ball and paddle. Hard drives are used as controls to move the paddles, and LED lights track the score of the game. The company demoed the table at last year's WIRED2016 tech conference. The original Pong was a 2D-sports game designed to simulate table tennis. It was released by Atari in 1972 and players controlled a paddle on the screen by moving it up and down to return a ball.

Videographer Kaipo Jones has released a live action comedic short imagining the X-Men's Nightcrawler as a cat (io9). It's a pretty accurate depiction of what a cat with the ability to teleport would probably be like to hang out with, and is the latest of a whole series of superheroes-as-cats shorts by the video maker.

To celebrate the 30th birthday of Dizzy, the Oliver Twins' adventuring egg hero, unreleased NES game Magic World Dizzy has been released free to play online or download in ROM form (Eurogamer). The game - a port of acclaimed home computer classic Fantasy World Dizzy - was originally developed 24 years ago, but never came out. The Oliver Twins are also running a competition with prizes for completing the game and are planning a Kickstarter-funded NES cartridge release.

The battle of the artificial intelligence personal assistants is on. To compete with Amazon's Echo, Google has released its own Home device in the UK. Costing £129, the Wi-Fi connected speaker system lets users ask questions, search for directions, play music, and more using voice commands and Google Assistant, the firm's in-depth AI helper.

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She told Apple to pay $13 billion in back taxes – now she could change the way Google does search and Facebook does social. In this issue, we profile Margrethe Vestager, the woman bringing the European Commission’s fight against monopolies to the heart of Silicon Valley. Plus, we go inside the Macedonian fake news factory and hear how Brexit could impact the UK's technology sector. Subscribe now and save.